Incito MentisA blog by Syed Abdul Karim

Just finished reading another amazing book by Daniel Pink – Drive. It’s a nice amalgamation of thoughts and learning from some of the greatest psychologists and behavioral economists of our time and Dan Pink wonderfully builds on their thinking to give us a nice operating system for the 21st century – dubbed Motivation 3.0. It is the key to unlocking hidden human potential especially in this day and age when the world needs more creative and conceptual thinking. The most profound learning for me was the impact of this thinking on parenting. I guess this is the change in perspective that comes when you became a father of three kids.

So what is the big learning. The idea that we as humans do our best when we are inner directed and self-driven is both very intuitive and at the same time quite unreal. Why the paradox? Well there are so many people out there who seem to only operate when there is a carrot or stick to drive them forward. They seem to be getting by, following the wave, going with the flow of the status quo. Thinking about why this is so I realized that this is a probably a symptom of Motivation 2.0, as Dan Pink puts it. After spending years of their life in a world of Motivation 2.0, people feel succumbed and resistant to the idea of autonomy. Now it is hard for them to imagine being self-directed and tune in to their inner selves. And I believe a large part of this has to do with parenting and schooling. What happens in an organizational life only further perpetuates a mindset many have grown up with. This is the reason why I feel it is important to positively influence the environment early on for kids and help them find their way to a self-directed and autonomous way of living.

Although the principles in the book apply across all life stages I have looked at them from a perspective of parenting. What are the the three driving principles of Motivation 3.0 as Dan Pink puts it?

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Larger Purpose

These are simple yet powerful principles that are key to unlocking human or a child’s hidden potential. The key premise being that we as humans thrive in an environment when we are given the freedom to do what we want to do, how we want to do, when we want to do and who we want to do it with. Obviously from a child’s perspective it seems bizarre to let them simply even do what they want since a young mind will not always know the difference between something harmful and harmless and therefore could end up doing some serious damage to themselves or to someone around them.

However, with proper direction and a set of controlled variables a child can be given the freedom to choose and practice some level of autonomy. For example, if a child is sent to the library for an hour to freely explore and choose a book as he pleases, there is little damage he could do but what he would do out of his own choice will be far more enabling and motivating then any forced learning.

The principle of Mastery is yet another profound concept. The idea being to shift behavior from performance goals to learning goals. For example, getting an A in science or becoming an explorer of the universe are two different things. Dan Pink talked about how performance goals have driven many corporate executives to game the system and focus so narrowly on short-term targets that they vastly undermine an organizations longer term interests. The same applies to children. A blind focus on grades means less learning and more focusing on anything that will help to get the grade. The quest for mastery creates enthusiasm and creates engagement in the task itself. One key trigger of this behavior is the mindset. If a child believes their intelligence is limited they would push to a certain extent until their self-belief drives them to stop trying. This was proven in an experiment when in another scenario children who believe that intelligence is expandable and can be nurtured work harder to overcome challenging situations. One way to put a child on the quest for mastery is to create opportunities which encourage “Flow” – a concept by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi which he covered in a book by the same name. Those experiences when we are engaged in a Goldilocks task – not too hard, not too easy, but just right keep us going. And it is through these everyday experiences of “flow” we can set ourselves and our children on a path to mastery.

Last but not least, driving behavior through a larger purpose. I think this idea is important at all levels. From a child to an organization. Brands which adopt a larger purpose not only build loyalty amongst it’s customers but also it’s employees. I think there is a DNA code within us that drives us to pursue a purpose larger than ourselves and it is this larger purpose that makes us the most happy. The same applies for children. Explaining to them the larger purpose of what they are doing and why they are doing it can really drive them forward to pursue a task with greater zeal.

I could probably go on writing but in sum, Motivation 3.0 is driven by three principles: Autonomy, Mastery and Larger Purpose. This is one of the longest posts I have written and despite that I don’t think I have done justice to both the book and the topic. Drive is an amazing light read – one that I would highly recommend whether you are a parent, teacher, organization leader or simply human. It has some lessons in there for everyone.

I just finished reading Freakonomics. Quite a book. It was long overdue but when I got to it, it flew like a breeze.  Stephen Dubner did a wonderful job capturing the insightful research and anlaysis by Steven Levitt. What really inspired me was his writing style - very engaging and purposeful. I will probably take a break with another book or two before reading Super Freakonomics. But I must say this was hardly like the Economics textbook from way back in business school.

So what was some of the key learning. For one, things are not always what they seem. ‘Conventional Wisdom’ maybe conventional but it is certainly not wisdom. It may seem quite obvious that the risk of a child getting shot by accident in a household with a gun maybe far greater than a child drowning in a house with a swimming pool. But quite the opposite is true. In fact most people would find a swimming pool a great thing to have in a home. Statistically however it has been proven that more children die from drowning than from a gun shot accident.

The same is true for riding in a car and flying in a plane. Mosy people are afraid of flying than they are of riding in a car. Why is that? Data again proves that flying is safer than riding in a car. In a car we feel more in control, especially when we are in the driving seat but in an airplane we are in the hands of someone we usually don’t even see and the unknown sparks a far greater fear in us. We intrinsically fear uncertainty. The more unknown the variable the greater our fear. But the point is this, what we believe or know to be conventional wisdom is not necessarily true.

Looking underneath the surface usually reveals a completely unexpected picture. Like the case of the sudden drop in crime in the United States and more specifically in New York. Surprisingly this topic has been a subject of many books and quite amazingly now looking at some of the examples in retrospect, this case has been used nicely to fit the context of whatever that was being talked about.

I don’t want to be the judge on who is right and who is wrong but in the ‘Tipping Point’ the context was that when small things are taken care of, when graffiti on the streets is removed, when broken windows and damaged street property is kept in shape it eventually leads to a Tipping Point in crime when suddenly the larger crimes being to reduce leading to an overall decline in crime rate. This was the apparent strategy by Mayor Giuliani to bring crime rate down in New York. In Freakonomics the reason for this reduction is completely different. After exploring a number of possible angles and then negating them Steve Levitt concludes that it was the legalization of abortion in the 1970s that eventually led to the reduction in crime in the 1990s. His theory being that women who usually seek abortion are women who for whatever reason are not in a shape or condition to raise a child, from being too young or too poor to everything in between. Therefore when they were allowed abortion it reduced the number of unwanted babies, babies who would not have been cared for, raised, educated and groomed in the same way as a mother who wanted a child and as result are more likely to perform poorly at school, drop out and eventually turn to a life of crime. Quite a theory but very interesting nevertheless.

Now having read Malcolm Gladwell’s Broken Window Theory to crime reduction in New York and Steve Levitt’s Abortion Theory you can’t help but think that it is unlikely both theories are true. I will let you draw your own conclusions, feel free to tell me what they are in the comments below. But I learnt one important thing. It is amazing how powerful writing can be as a tool to convince people and change their opinion. At the time of reading both perspectives I was equally convinced by each. Upon further research for this blog post I learnt that perhaps both are questionable but they both made a damn good case of what they were saying and they surely had me convinced.

These were just some of the highlights from the book. There are a lot more interesting examples and observations in Freakonomics that I would like to talk about. Perhaps in a future blog I will cover those as well, which if I keep to my promise should be not too far away.

It is amazing how the human brain works. Some of the findings from behavioral economics on our decision making abilities are both shocking and fascinating, to say the least. It’s like looking at an engine from the inside and seeing how everything works. As a planner understanding human behavior is always a cherished and critical part of my work. While reading about some of these concepts I could not help but realize how obviously we err when it comes to making a decision.

I have talked about Behavioral Economics in earlier posts as well. Here I would like to talk about the concept of anchoring. Let’s see how it works. What if I were to tell you that you have to guess the price of a premium chocolate bar and before doing so I make you write down the last two digits of your ID card. What would happen? You are most likely going to select a number that is close to your ‘anchor’ (in this case the last two digits of your ID card).

Don’t believe this. A number of experiments with students from MIT have been done with a similar setup. When the results were analyzed it was noted that all respondents chose a number that was close to their respective anchor*. This is known as ‘arbitrary coherence’. If we reflect on our lives we will find many occasions when our own anchors have influenced our decisions. Remember the price of the first Widescreen TV that you may have bought and then think about all future upgrades. The price you paid for the first TV will be your anchor for all future purchases.

What are the implications of “anchoring” on us at a personal level? For one not all our anchors may be in our best interest. Owing to some arbitrary coherence we may have anchored on values that are much higher than what they should be (at least from a rational perspective). Knowing how our brain works and our tendency to anchor so irrationally we can perhaps make better decisions.

So what’s the implication of this concept in marketing and branding? One brilliant example that comes to mind was the launch of a soft drink in the United Kingdom (I just can’t remember the name). In a highly competitive category with a limited budget this brand used anchoring to influence consumer behavior with great effect. What was the big idea? Outside the stadium before the end of a big game the company dumped hundreds of empty cans in and around all the trash bins filling them up to create the effect that this drink was consumed by hundreds of people from the audience. When the match finished fans leaving the stadium noticed these cans wondering why they did not see this drink anywhere. This creatively introduced the brand to thousands at the stadium for a minimal cost and triggered them to inquire retailers about the mystery beverage facilitating the soft drinks eventual arrival to the trade. This is a great example of how an anchor was used to cue popularity when launching a new product. Have you come across other examples of anchoring used in marketing?

*You can read more about this in Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational.

We are talking about a Lamborghini here. Does it need a pitch? Who does not want to own a Lamborghini? Those who can afford an Enzo or those who already own the last two I guess! Why would you need to make a TV ad for a Lamborghini? Probably the same reason why I am writing this blog. Do something so great and awesome that people end up talking about it. Probably that’s why.

I have seen a lot of TV Commercials. The memorable ones usually make a good thing really great. This is one of them. What makes it great? The key insight. If I were to imagine the brief for this ad I believe the insight would have read something like this – “What makes something great depends on what it is being compared to”. It is all about the ‘power of the relative’. You put something in a different context and suddenly it looks different. I have seen a number of behavioral economists talk about this concept. Allow me to illustrate:

You want a buy a pen that costs $20. You learn there is a place 30 minutes away that is selling the same pen for $10. What do you do? Most people would go for the $10 pen. Similarly there is a suit that you like and it costs $1000. Again you learn that about 30 minutes away another branch of the same store sells the suit for $990. What do you do? Like most rational people you would go for the $1000 suit. This is the power of context. The same $10 would be saved for the same effort of driving 30 minutes away but because of the difference in context a completely different decision is made.

This is what the creative team has done here. They have used this power of context to their advantage. It’s not about comparing a Lamborghini to a Ferrari or a Porsche. No sir! It is about comparing the opportunity to own a Lamborghini to something rarer than giving birth to a Nobel Prize winner or being able to successfully climb Mount Everest!

And therefore as a result, they have managed to make something hot even hotter. This is the power of context. An extremely valuable tool for great advertising I think.

JWT Mumbai’s Diamond Bride Campaign is a great example of rock-solid strategic thinking. It demonstrates how a deep consumer insight can lead to a major change in behavior. It shows how something as rooted as tradition can be challenged and how a new paradigm can be created. De Beers India came up with a very challenging brief “How to get Indians to use more diamond jewelry instead of gold at their weddings?” A question that had no easy answers. It’s like asking women in America to wear a black dress at their weddings instead of a white one!

This meant that the battle had to be fought on a higher ground. The inherent symbolism of security, well-being, tradition and value that came with gold jewelry was not going to be easy to overcome. To win this cultural battle, the planners decided to explore the modernity, status and glamour of diamonds and give them a whole new context with respect to weddings.

So what is the key learning that we can draw from this as planners? For me I think it is the power of context. If we can put something in an entirely different context and yet be relevant we can uncover some big insights and inspire dramatic changes in behavior. So the next time you want someone to use more of your product or service, I think it would be a good idea to get out of context, experiment with something fresh, bounce it off with consumers and then see where it takes you!